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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Fight Intolerance, Not Free Speech

If you're too lazy to click on the link, Selma City (a grounds for Martin Luther King's speeches and marches back in the Civil Rights Movement) is building a monument to the leader of the infamous Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest. And everyone's pissed.

I concede a little here; they sort of have a right to be pissed. Selma was a big target of the KKK back when they were still highly active and violent.

But I'm sick and tired of people going oh no Nazis horrible, should die and KKK super racist should burn in hell because you're missing the point entirely.

Both groups are known for, what exactly? Violent intolerance. But the statue they're building is just that, a statue. They're not burning houses down anymore. They're simply another group with another set of (albeit slightly twisted) beliefs.

In fact, I'm seeing a lot more intolerance from those against the statue than from the KKK themselves. Disallowing the erection of the statue implies intolerance against free speech, if anything.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't be pissed. You should be. I would be pretty mad if my city decided to drop a statue of, say, Romney, in my backyard. But stop calling it a "heinous crime" or what-have-you. You should be mad because you don't want your city being represented a certain way. You should be mad because of funding, or because the statue is in a bad spot. But stop calling it a crime against humanity when groups you don't believe in make monuments to themselves. The enemy is not intolerant groups, but intolerance itself.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you.-Friedrich Nietzsche

3 comments:

Two key words there. Meaning taxpayer dollars are funding the maintenance/expansion of this. If bigots want to erect a 600-foot tall statue to Hitler, that's fine, if it's on their private property and doesn't conflict with building ordinances/permits (which it likely would but we're being hypothetical here.)

But as for the citizens of Selma, I can't see how shouldn't be enraged by this. And while maybe calling it a "heinous crime against humanity oh my god these people are the evulz" may be somewhat of an exaggeration, since when is that kind of exaggeration not a usual expression of this kind of rage?

Furthermore:"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."-Friedrich Nietzsche

I hardly think that being angry at some bigoted redneck agitators really makes you a monster. By the same token, how exactly are building a monument to a genuinely terrible person and being vocal and angry about said monument even in the same category of negative behavior? One is an action that tries to dignify and revere someone who is categorically and objectively evil using public funds, while the other one is name-calling.

P.S. I really don't want to sound preachy, but I honestly dont follow your logic in equating the two.

First off, thanks for the response, and it didn't come off preachy at all.

"Two key words there. Meaning taxpayer dollars are funding the maintenance/expansion of this."Agreed and noted in the last paragraph of the post.

"And while maybe calling it a "heinous crime against humanity oh my god these people are the evulz" may be somewhat of an exaggeration, since when is that kind of exaggeration not a usual expression of this kind of rage?"Also agreed, and while it's justifiable on an emotional sense it shouldn't be on a logical one. The problem is, a lot of people use it for the latter. I can't account for what people say when they're raging, because that's out of both my and their control.

"I hardly think that being angry at some bigoted redneck agitators really makes you a monster. By the same token, how exactly are building a monument to a genuinely terrible person and being vocal and angry about said monument even in the same category of negative behavior? One is an action that tries to dignify and revere someone who is categorically and objectively evil using public funds, while the other one is name-calling."It's not so much the actions (name-calling) that are monstrous but the attitude. The point I was trying to get across was that their attitude is similar to that of Forrest himself.

Forrest started an organization of KKK'ers to build a sense of blind hate against non-whites.And now non-whites (and whites alike) are building a sense of blind hate against KKK'ers.

You can call it revenge, and in a sense that's fair and just, but that's exactly the sort of behavior that encourages extremism in the first place. Hence, the Nietzsche quote.

(Once again, not accounting for other reasons for opposition to the statue. Things like taxpayer dollars, bad representation of the city, and public waste of space are perfectly good reasons).

And you're excused for the weird syntax. I didn't find anything weird about it so it looks like I'm just as tired.